Pictures of Hollis Woods

PICTURES OF HOLLIS WOODS
By Patricia Reilly Giff
Random House (Wendy Lamb Books), 2002

Category: Middle-grade fiction (Newbery Honor Book)

Happy Holidays! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Kwanzaa! Merry Christmas! However you celebrate the joy of light during the winter months, I hope the festivities were fulfilling and that you were able to find some time for reading and relaxing. For the first time in two months–since I started reading Middle Grade/YA non-fiction books for the Cybils award–I curled up with a book of fiction over the weekend. As luck would have it, I chose an intense and fast-paced novel that was perfect for holiday reading.

Hollis Woods is twelve and she has had a tough time of it. Parentless and misunderstood, she is jerked from one foster home to another, (almost) never feeling at home and relying on her drawings for self-expression and survival. It is only when she lands in a situation that fits her, living with an elderly and eccentric art teacher named Josie, that Hollis is able to explore her recent past and the pain of losing the Reagans, a foster family that she adored.

Patricia Reilly Giff uses flashback so well in this book. The tension in Hollis’ new life with Josie (Josie’s increasing forgetfulness is making her an unfit guardian for Hollis) and in her old life with the Reagans (something happened to make Hollis leave the Reagan family, but what?) couple to make an intense and satisfying novel.